Tibetan / Vajrayana

Vajrayana Buddhism is most closely associated with Tibet and can be characterized by the figure of the siddha, the master whose spiritual realization is so profound that he or she has power over the phenomenal world, and in whom the profundity and vastness of absolute truth is fully and completely manifested. Many of our most well-known authors come from this tradition of Tibetan Buddhism .

[Note: The tags for the various schools are not definitive as many books span multiple traditions, etc. They are meant to use as a starting point for exploring this collection.]

Fear and Fearlessness as a Direct Path of Awakening

Fear is something that's such a part of our lives that it doesn't seem it would be possible to live without it. This book disputes that claim in a powerful way. Gaylon Ferguson presents traditional Buddhist teachings to show that… Read More

A Commentary on Karma Chagme's Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen

This book grows out of an oral teaching that Khenchen Thrangu gave in Crestone, Colorado, on Karma Chagme's text Meaningful to Behold: The Essential Instructions of the Compassionate One on the Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Thrangu Rinpoche explains in… Read More

An Explanation of the Seven-Line Prayer to Guru Padmasambhava

The text called the “Seven-Line Prayer” is said to contain the most sacred and important teachings of the Nyingma school and is recited daily by many Tibetan Buddhists. White Lotus unlocks the secret of the prayer and explains its… Read More

A Guide to View, Meditation, and Result in the Nine Vehicles

A concise commentary by the eighth-century Indian Buddhist master Padmasambhava on a chapter from the Guhyagarbha Tantra, which gives an overview of the different Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophical views, including the Great Perfection (Dzogchen), with an explicative commentary by the… Read More

Young practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism from Asian and Western cultures have similar questions and concerns, such as the conflicts between traditional values and the influence of modern materialism. In four thoughtful commentaries, Thinley Norbu addresses contrasting cultural perspectives on topics… Read More

The Essential Tantras of Mahayoga

The Complete Nyingma Tradition from Sutra to Tantra, a multivolume masterwork by the eighteenth-century tantric master Choying Tobden Dorje, traces the path of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism from beginning to end. Books 15 to 17: The Essential Tantras… Read More

My Teachers’ Essential Guidance on Dzogchen

The teachings in this book are the distillation of a lifetime’s commitment to Dzogchen realization and practice. Here, Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche teaches from “the top of the mountain down.” That is, he offers to Western readers with varying levels of… Read More

Where Zen and Tantra Meet

The Teacup and the Skullcup is made up of edited transcripts from two seminars that Chögyam Trungpa gave near the beginning of his North American teaching career in 1974—one in Barnet, Vermont, and one in Boston—called “Zen and Tantra.”… Read More

A Seven-Step Method for Deepening Meditation Practice

In the late 1990s, shortly after arriving in the United States, it became clear to Dza Kilung Rinpoche that his Western students were unable to progress in meditation as well as his students had back in Asia—and he realized that… Read More

A Practical Guide to the Jhanas

The jhānas are eight progressive altered states of consciousness that can be identified with the aspect of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path called Right Concentration. Training in concentration leads to these states, each of which yields a deeper and subtler state… Read More

An Explanation of a Tibetan Classic on What Is Most Important

The urgency of spiritual practice has seldom been as simply and powerfully conveyed as it is in Padampa Sangye’s One Hundred Verses. This Tibetan Buddhist classic is an antidote to the tendency we all have to waste our precious human… Read More

Discovering a Lost Tradition

Until the early twentieth century, hardly any traces of the Tibetan tradition of Chinese Chan Buddhism, or Zen, remained. Then the discovery of a sealed cave in Dunhuang, full of manuscripts in various languages dating from the first millennium CE,… Read More

Profound Instructions on Dzogchen, the Great Perfection

This volume is a heartfelt, intimate presentation of the entire system of the Nyingma tradition from sutra to tantra to Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, and how through it, modern-day practitioners can succeed in attaining fully realized buddhahood. Inspiring stories of… Read More

What It Is, What It Isn't, Why It Matters

The Buddha’s teaching on karma (literally, “action”) is nothing other than his compassionate explanation of the way things are: our thoughts and actions determine our future, and therefore we ourselves are largely responsible for the way our lives unfold. Yet… Read More